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A year ago this time, Colin Kaepernick was a disregarded backup quarterback with the San Francisco 49ers. He had completed all of three passes in the National Football League and had run the ball twice for minus two yards.

Pegging him as a likely Super Bowl quarterback would have seemed ridiculous such a short time ago.

But there he was, five yards and the right play call away from not only being a champion, but the likely most valuable player in Super Bowl XLVII. Maybe the greatest nowhere-to-somewhere story we’ve ever seen.

And he wasn’t alone in last year’s NFL.

A year ago this time, Russell Wilson was something of a curiosity. He wasn’t supposed to win the starting quarterback position with the Seattle Seahawks. That was kind of handed to expensive free agent Matt Flynn, the former backup to Green Bay’s Aaron Rodgers.

But Wilson, a middle-round draft pick, not in the first pick conversation surrounding Andrew Luck and Robert Griffin III, in the new salary structure of the NFL making less than Korbinian Holzer, got better, and better, taking the Seahawks to the playoffs and a terrific 11-5 record in the tough NFC West.

So here we are, at the start of another NFL season, and I’m doing the foolish thing in September and trying to come up with a Super Bowl champion. Once in a decade or so, I get this right. But this year, I keep coming back to Kaepernick and Wilson, to the 49ers and the Seahawks, to two quarterbacks whose combined salary will be just over $2 million, making them just about the lowest paid great players in the NFL.

Kaepernick, to be nice, is something of a freak. He is built like a tight end, takes off like a running back, seems to have Dan Marino arm strength (and not necessarily his accuracy). He has been, at times, impossible to defend. And somehow, he lost the Super Bowl to Joe Flacco, as much because the right Harbaugh brother called the wrong plays in the final seconds.

That was his first time thought the league. Will he get better in his second year, or will this be like a pitcher going through the league a second time? Will teams know how to defend Kaepernick after breaking down all he does?

Wilson is different. He isn’t made of granite. He is too short (5-foot-10) to be an NFL quarterback, isn’t the power back Kaepernick is, but has a remarkable sense about him. With huge hands on a smaller man (by football standards) Wilson has a vision – it’s almost like the game slows down for him, the way it does for Tom Brady – with instincts to match and control and confidence that is almost unheard of for a player this young. He doesn't play quarterback as much as he conducts the orchestra.

Kaepernick or Wilson: Which one gets out of the NFC West? Which one winds up in the Super Bowl?

The NFL has always been a league of great quarterbacks, only now there are more than ever before. The league has lived nicely off the brilliance of Peyton Manning and Brady, off the next tier of Rodgers and Drew Brees, off having Hall of Fame quarterbacks who change the game.

But last year, everything changed when Luck was drafted first and Washington traded away the moon to get RG3 at No. 2. Luck’s Colts won 11 games. RG3 took the Redskins to the playoffs. The rich quality of NFL quarterbacks became that much wealthier.

The new tier of the soon-to-be brilliant now includes Kaepernick and Wilson, Luck and RG3, and that’s not necessarily considering the quality of the veterans like Eli Manning, Matt Ryan, Ben Roethlisberger and Tony Romo. Or Flacco, who dominated in last year’s playoffs, which further adds to the guessing game of who will play in this season’s Super Bowl in New York.

How much would anyone have bet against a Kaepernick-Flacco Super Bowl last September? How impossible would that have seemed?

There is still Matthew Stafford in Detroit, who throws for a billion yards most seasons and has to learn to win. The same is true for Cam Newton, who is more Kaepernick and Griffin than Luck or Manning. There is Jay Cutler learning from Marc Trestman: How will that work out? There is Michael Vick in a hurry-up offence: That is intriguing.

When has the NFL been so flush with quarterbacks, so stacked at the most important position in the game? That should make a league with parity all the more difficult to predict.

But this is the start of the new season and I’m still a little caught up in last season – stuck on Kaepernick and Wilson, the newest, least expensive toys in all of football.

One of them is going to win the Super Bowl. It’s too bad they play in the same division in the same conference at the same time.

Kaepernick or Wilson: One will win this year's Super Bowl

Simmons on who he thinks has the edge in 2013

A year ago this time, Colin Kaepernick was a disregarded backup quarterback with the San Francisco 49ers. He had completed all of three passes in the National Football League and had run the ball twice for minus two yards.

Pegging him as a likely Super Bowl quarterback would have seemed ridiculous such a short time ago.

But there he was, five yards and the right play call away from not only being a champion, but the likely most valuable player in Super Bowl XLVII. Maybe the greatest nowhere-to-somewhere story we’ve ever seen.

And he wasn’t alone in last year’s NFL.

A year ago this time, Russell Wilson was something of a curiosity. He wasn’t supposed to win the starting quarterback position with the Seattle Seahawks. That was kind of handed to expensive free agent Matt Flynn, the former backup to Green Bay’s Aaron Rodgers.

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